It’s been a month since the smart commentary after Super Tuesday said that Donald Trump was pivoting to being more presidential and unifying. Since then, he has: declared that he’d consider paying the legal bills of a goon who sucker-punched a black protester; talked of riots at the Republican convention if it doesn’t go his way; threatened and mocked Heidi Cruz; and justified his campaign manager’s manhandling of a female journalist in the most asinine and dishonest ways.

In a speech last September, Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, grumbled about the “constraint physical currency imposes” on setting negative interest rates. After considering various ways of dealing with this nuisance, he concluded that an “interesting solution” would be to “maintain the principle of a government-backed currency, but have it issued in an electronic rather than paper form.” This “would allow negative interest rates to be levied on currency easily and speedily.” Translation: Make people hold their cash in electronic form (and thus in banks); they will then have no means of escaping the levy on savings that negative interest rates effectively represent.

But for some of Trump’s lies, the benefits are almost impossible to discern. When Trump asks of Fields, “How do you know those bruises weren’t already there?,” whom does he help? Does he think that the American electorate has a strong majority who believe women frequently create bruises on themselves to falsely accuse others of abuse?

Keep in mind, Corey​ Lewandowski already made a glaring, easily disproven lie, publicly telling Fields, “You are totally delusional. I never touched you. As a matter of fact, I have never even met you.”

When Trump suggests she’s lying about the whole encounter, and never felt any real pain because “wouldn’t you think that she would have yelled out a scream or something?,” or when he describes her as “grabbing” — how does that benefit him, or Lewandowski or his campaign? Unless you see Lewandowski as the key central Jenga block keeping the entire tower from collapsing, why is it worth Trump going all-out to defend Lewandowski and insisting Fields changed her story when she hasn’t?

There is no massive pro-Lewandowski constituency in the GOP electorate or the electorate at large. To the extent the public knows of him, he’s “that guy who grabbed that reporter and now faces battery charges.” The insistence that Lewandowski did nothing wrong, and merely intervened to save Trump from a delusional self-harming woman who might have been carrying a bomb, is not just wildly implausible or morally wrong lie; it’s a stupid lie.

Paul Johnson, writing of the rise of communism in Russia and of national socialism in Germany, asserted the former was rape and the latter was seduction. Which came to mind when reading this about Trump.

Wednesday, 30 March 2016

Ann Coulter calls Trump “mental,” Newt Gingrich finds his recent behavior “utterly stupid” and unpresidential and his former communications director says he doesn’t really want to be president, which would explain a lot. And Jim Geraghty responds:

Just FYI, Trump supporters, no one should let you off of that bandwagon now. You should be handcuffed to that Titanic you volunteered to crew.

Donald Trump didn’t suddenly change in the past few days, weeks, or months. He’s the same guy he always was, the same guy that most of us in the conservative movement and GOP have been staunchly opposing for the past year. He didn’t abruptly become reckless, obnoxious, ill-informed, erratic, hot-tempered, pathologically dishonest, narcissistic, crude, and catastrophically unqualified for the presidency overnight. He’s always been that guy, and you denied it and ignored it and hand-waved it away and made excuses every step of the way because you were convinced that you were so much smarter than the rest of us. You were so certain that you were on some superior wavelength giving you special insight into the Donald; only you could tell that it was all an act. Only you could grasp that his constant courting of controversy was just to get attention from the media. Only you could instinctively sense that his style would play brilliantly in the general election and win over working-class Democrats. (SPOILER ALERT: It isn’t.) You insisted that you could “coach him.”

You came to those conclusions not because you’re smarter than the rest of us, but because you’re actually more foolish than the rest of us. You insisted Occam’s Razor couldn’t possibly be true -- that Trump acts the way he does because this is who he is, this is the way he is all the time, and he will always be like this. You fooled yourself into believing that Trump was playing this nine-level chess game that only you and a few others could perceive and understand. Only you could see the long game.

But there is no long game. He’s winging it. There is no grand strategy. There is no master plan. Trump doesn’t look ahead to the next sentence, much less the next step in getting elected.

[...]

Technically we’re supposed to welcome previous Trump fans-turned-foes with open arms. But barring some miraculous comeback by Ted Cruz, the Trump campaign will have cost the Republican party the presidency after eight years of Obama, and perhaps the Senate and even the House -- not to mention Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court. Years of effort spent attempting to dispel the accusations of inherent Republican misogyny, xenophobia, hypocrisy, ignorance, and blind rage have been undone by Trump’s campaign. And every Trump advocate in front of a camera had a hand in this.

During CNN’s Republican Presidential Town Hall on Tuesday, Donald Trump was asked what the three most important roles of the federal government were. His answer: security, health care and education.

The Founders had a different idea when they wrote Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution. Trump was right about security, which they called “the common defense.” But they listed things like justice, coining money, and—how on earth did he miss this one?—establishing a “rule of naturalization,” not health care nor education as a federal responsibility.

Tuesday, 29 March 2016

Correction: Yesterday’s Big Idea incorrectly characterized the racial composition of Hawaii. I was trying to make the point that New York has a larger African American population than the trio of states that had low-turnout caucuses over the weekend. Hawaii, of course, is the least white state in the country. According to the Census Bureau, non-Hispanic whites account for 23 percent. The islands are 38 percent Asian. An additional 23 percent identify as mixed race. Hispanics account for another 10 percent, and African Americans account for 1.6 percent. Apologies to my friends in the Aloha State.

WaPo might add another apology to the 10 percent of islanders who are “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander.” I mean, it’s Hawaii.

The feds have asked a court to dismiss an order requesting Apple’s assistance in unlocking an iPhone because a third party has unlocked it. Two things have been proven here: First, someone other than than Apple can unlock an iPhone. So much for security. Second, Apple cares more about its reputation than your safety. A reputation it never deserved at all.